Secrets
by Selenity Jade
Summary: [Complete] One shot Buruma and Vejiita ficlet set in the future timeline. Buruma's secret.


**Secrets**  
_By Selenity Jade  
Rated: PG_

Disclaimer: I do not own DBZ, really. I promise. I'd swear on my grave if I were dead. Though I'm not, so I guess you'll just have to take my word for it that I am in fact _not_ Akira Toriyama. 

Summary: Takes place in the future timeline, and that's new ground for me.

**X**

Looking up from her blueprints, Buruma glanced at the clock in surprise when it chimed midnight. She had been working on the infernal time machine for over fourteen hours and she hadn't even noticed.

And Trunks was late.

She set the designs on the table in front of her and stood from her swivel chair, wincing as her muscles protested the sudden movement. She was getting too old for such long hours staring at oddly colored pieces of paper, she decided. Her eyes stung, her head was pounding, and her joints and muscles violently protested their sudden use after that much inactivity.

She was rather proud of herself for being still able to completely ignore such inconveniences as eyestrain and headaches when she was working out her inventions on paper or in the laboratory.

She was still beautiful and very well-formed for a middle-aged woman, too. Of course, she _was_ rounder, but that was to be expected after living through what she went through. She might stubbornly refuse to admit defeat to the aging process, but she didn't spend nearly enough time on herself that she needed to in order to make herself look _really _good. Her figure was a result of living on coffee alone while she worked and sometimes not eating for days. Until her son came in and reminded her that the time machine could wait fifteen minutes while she forced food into her stomach.

She smiled slightly at the thought of her son. She was very proud of Trunks. He was as beautiful as she had been and twice as smart, and he had his father's strength and power in battle. He was her real accomplishment. And the one she was most proud of.

She had raised a very fine young man, and she knew that even if she never completed the time machine and this world was doomed he'd fight with everything he had. Just like his father and Son-kun had done.

She sighed and stretched the tight muscles in her back and legs before she walked – a little unsteadily – out of her office. She double checked the lock after closing it up and then headed quietly towards her room. Trunks had been due home a few hours ago, but sometimes his plans changed. She was a little worried, but she knew if he felt he needed to stay away longer to avoid the cyborgs or anyone else, he would. He did take her safety very seriously. She was all he had now and she couldn't fight, and he had been late more often than he was on time anymore. He was being overly careful, and she wasn't sure if it was because the cyborgs suspected something and he wasn't telling her, or what he was doing those hours he was late. He refused to tell her everything; she knew that he didn't want to worry her over it, but sometimes she wished they could communicate long distances on a satellite phone or another device without those infernal machines picking up the transmission.

Entering her bedroom, she nursed her lower lip between her teeth as she pulled her shirt over her head and tossed it onto the floor. Every time Trunks left the compound, she feared for him as she had never feared for anyone else. He was all she had now. He was all that was left of the resistance. He was all that was left of her friends, her family, and the man she loved.

She glanced unwillingly up at the closet, and even though it was closed, she looked towards the top shelf where she knew a large, black box resided. She hesitated only a moment before she made her way to the closet and opened it, revealing the metallic object. She lifted it from its place with some effort and carried it to her bed. Setting it down on the fluffy quilt, she paused again.

She knew it wasn't healthy, but she couldn't bring herself to get rid of it or stop looking at it. She glanced towards her bedroom door and after a thoughtful moment, she locked it.

It wouldn't do to have her son come in while she was doing this.

After securing her sleeping quarters, she climbed up onto the bed, placing the box in front of her with its latch facing her. Without hesitation this time, she opened the box.

She felt her heart contract as it always did whenever the container was opened, but she didn't stop. She couldn't stop, not even after all these years.

The first object she pulled out was a battered piece of armor, slightly larger than her hand. It was covered in brown-colored stains that she couldn't bring herself to remove, even if every time she saw it she started to cry.

It was the only surviving piece of Vejiita Gohan had found for her. She had never seen his body, and had only her best friend's son's witnessed account of what had happened. She didn't doubt Gohan's word, but when she had first heard of his death, Buruma couldn't stop hoping that it was a mistake and he would come home.

It took three years for that hope to fade, but sometimes, like this, she would feel that maybe – somehow – there was a way he was still alive, even though she knew he wasn't and never would be again. The dragonballs were gone and so was Vejiita.

She ran her fingers over the armor piece carefully, remembering the last time she saw him wear it – the day he died. She stifled her tears as she always did, though her eyes stung with them. If after fifteen years she could still cry so easily over his death, she didn't think she'd ever get over it.

She was glad her friends couldn't see her still so broken after his death. She was able to hide the pain from her son – she had to – but she wouldn't have fooled the people who knew her before. Before, when she was happy.

She set aside the piece, and pulled out a black body-suit, made out of that odd material that Vejiita had liked. It had been his favorite pair, and when she removed his clothes to the underground storage room, she just hadn't the heart to put this one with them. It had torn her apart to remove those clothes from his room as it was, but it had been necessary. She couldn't have her son grow up in a shrine to his dead father. She knew he needed more structure than a mother unable to move on. She needed to be strong for the son Vejiita gave her so that he could be strong enough to avenge his father and help the few hundred surviving humans left in the world. If she had been too broken to give her son her strength, she didn't think any of them would have survived this long.

But she hadn't been able to seal this box with the rest of Vejiita's things. She had always made sure Trunks couldn't see her searching through his father's things like some sort of obsessed stalker, but she took this box out as often as possible, just to stay connected to the man she loved with a passion that had scared her and nearly destroyed her when he'd died.

She hadn't even realized how fiercely she had fallen until he had been taken from her. She had always believed she felt passion, surely, but not love. After all, they hadn't even really had a relationship. Vejiita prepared for the cyborgs and she helped him, and a few times, they fought so fiercely that they had ended up in bed. It was only when he had been killed that she realized she had loved the man in spite of his attitude and crassness. Or maybe she had loved him because of them. So she kept only the most Vejiita-like objects with her.

She had kept only a few items in that box. The armor found after his death, his favorite body suit, Vejiita's old scouter from his days working for Furiza, a small medallion she assumed had come from his home world, and the only photograph she had of Vejiita and her together. The one her mother took when neither of them suspected she was sneaking up on them. Vejiita had been caught looking at her with an odd mixture of confusion, gentleness, and need when that picture had been taken. He had wanted to destroy the camera, and then later the picture, but she had hidden it from him. She sighed, grabbing the picture out of the box just as her security system beeped at her.

She glanced towards the screen beside her bed and typed in her password. The blue screen flashed Trunks name and she smiled in relief.

She stashed Vejiita's possessions back in the container, shut the lid on it, and quickly put it back on its shelf. Just as she shut her closet, her son walked in the room.

She hugged him as she always did when he came home, because this time it just might be the last. "Welcome back, Trunks," she said, carefully keeping that smile on her face as she pulled back to look up at her nearly grown son.

It wouldn't do at all to have him know she was still mourning for his father. He depended on her strength to help fuel his own strength, so she'd keep her keepsakes a secret until the cyborg menace had passed.

Maybe then she'd give the box to him.

**x**

**AN:** This was written for 100Themes on LiveJournal.

Lovies!


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